SoftBank-owned chip designer Arm posts record 2021 revenue, doubling earnings from automotive sector
- Arm revenue jumped 35 per cent in 2021 to US$2.7 billion and shipped 29.2 billion chips
- CEO Rene Haas said the strong performance could not have happened without its Chinese joint venture, which recently ousted its CEO after a public dispute
SoftBank plans to take the British tech company public. Regulatory hurdles stopped a deal to sell it to US chip maker Nvidia Corp.
Arm, which makes the basic blueprint used to design chips, had revenue of US$2.7 billion last year, up 35 per cent from the previous year. Licensing business revenue rose 61 per cent to US$1.13 billion and royalties, tracking the numbers of chips sold using Arm technology, rose 20 per cent to US$1.54 billion.
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Haas said the licensing business is “all about companies spending money with Arm about designing chips for the future”.
Asked about the revenue outlook, he said: “We’ve never done over a billion dollars. So I would say that’s a good leading indicator of the demand for the product.”
Haas said 29.2 billion chips using Arm technology were shipped last year, nearly 8 billion in the fourth quarter. He said Arm’s focus on the automotive sector three to four years ago was paying off and revenue from that segment more than doubled last year thanks to electrification and increasing computing power for cars.
“It probably would have been better if there was more supply,” said Haas about Arm’s automotive business.
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“One thing I can say is we had great results in this last year and it wouldn’t have happened without the China JV doing well,” he said.
